 Podcast was roundtable round 158 should your plumber have a podcast? That's a weird question, but like we've all heard everyone now has a podcast, right? But does that mean your plumber, your local accountant, independent coffee shop, whatever it is, whatever business is in and around you, probably only maybe exist in your city. Maybe there's a couple more in other cities, but should they have one too, right? So if you're a local business looking to eat customers through your door, physically through the door, probably with a mask on, come on, is a podcast a good use of your time? So we're going to dive into that. Of course, we're going to get into some other topics. That's what we're going to springboard off of, but let's meet the roundtable. Dave Jackson, go host, welcome back. Yeah, Dave Jackson from the school of podcasting.com. I'm trying to figure out if my plumber needs a podcaster now. I guess it depends on who your plumber is. I'm just pitching the album art with a big butt crack. I was waiting for the joke. I knew it was in there somewhere. All right. Well, I think we're still, we don't even have to mute. I don't have to bleep anything there. So good job. Not yet. And Marco, first time roundtabler, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you. Yep. The main cohost of the Ninja Rob podcast. Awesome. And Sheldon also, first timer, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I am the host of the leading equity podcast. All right. And then towards the end, we'll get in a little bit more about what those shows are about. But as I think about intros, I think Marco has a as a story in here about call to actions. I was thinking about intros today and, you know, kind of getting right to the point, which is ironically not what I'm doing right now. But this is what we talk about the things that you deal with as a podcast or not me. I do what I want. But getting into the content, like how fast, Dave? And you know, we usually talk about what a podcast is about. And sometimes I can derail a show. Like if I say Dave Jackson school podcasting, tell me what that's about. Honestly, as a listener, I don't, I'm kind of, I feel like that's the part where I'm like, skip, skip, skip. Where's the content, right? And I think if I want to know more, I'm probably the person that sticks around. So we're going to try talking about our podcast at the end. There we go. I also want to add value to the people who join the roundtable, right? So that's why I want to make sure you get the plug for your podcast. What I'm hoping is that you tell us what your podcast is. Someone in the audience says that's interesting to me. Maybe we should go with podcast and a tagline. I think I like that because you can't always get the name, the idea of the show from the name. So anyways, we're working things out in real time. That's what we do on the roundtable. We help you figure out how to do it right while we do it wrong. That's the tagline. There's the tagline. Awesome. All right. Well, hey, let's address that question. So really, Marco, you inspired this question because on the roundtable, we do stories, but we used to do topics. But if you have a topic, totally open to that. And, you know, you kind of came up with this idea about you have a local brick and mortar store, right? A shop. And you get customers there, but you also have a podcast. So why don't you tell us a little bit about maybe what your business is and then why you have a podcast and if those two overlap? All right. Yeah. So I own a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and a mixed martial arts academy, martial arts school, basically. And the podcast revolves around martial arts. And the reason myself and my podcast partners decided, or the other co-host decided to start the podcast was to solidify ourselves as subject matter experts in our field. And it's not the kind of thing that brings in a customer per se. But what it does is it adds value, but it also kind of starts connecting me with someone that's shown interest that's come to my website that wants to know what my schedule is, that wants me to contact them. And I'll send them a link to the podcast so that they get an idea, number one, who I am personally. But number two, what the, you know, what they could start to expect by walking through the doors in a in an intimidating atmosphere because, you know, as an adult, walking into a mixed martial arts academy can be pretty intimidating. So I'm trying to lower that barrier to entry. Awesome. And so, yeah, I mean, I like the idea of, I mean, you could just have the audio as a resource to potential students or new students, but instead, you know, when I think about local podcasting, I always think the challenge is it's twofold. You're trying to communicate to a local community who's probably not the majority of people who are going to find your podcast, right? So how do you get a podcast that's meant for people sort of right around you to listen, right? So that that's challenge number one. And then is it really worth it to be, it's kind of like paying for an ad that goes global, but you only need it to hit people in your city? Right. So obviously you're doing the work, even if you made a resource, like an audio resource, you're doing the work, you're going to put it out there. So why not put it as a podcast? But, you know, how do you sort of, how do you justify the time to put into making it a podcast and then especially with like a co-host and probably takes more time? It's fun, number one, right? Like so we wouldn't do it if we didn't enjoy it, right? And we get to talk about topics that we'd be talking about after training anyway, right? So new students, how people come in, flights that are happening, competitions that are coming up. So why not record it? And we started from the inside out. So we promoted it to our, you know, like our captive audience, we have students. So we say, hey, we have this podcast, listen to it, then send it out to your friends that might be interested because everybody, the trains at a martial arts academy has a friend that's interested. Hey, this is my instructor's podcast. And we kind of went from there. So we had a listener base already baked in, and then we grew out from there. And what's the challenge to sort of speaking to a local audience, but at the same time, since anyone can listen to it, speaking to everyone who could listen. Yeah. So I think you really, ultimately, you want to, you want to put out a good podcast, right? So we're talking about things that are relevant and that we are interested in. So when we're sending potential customers to a podcast, it's a very specific one, right? So the podcast isn't marketed to be local here to Philadelphia. Anybody around the world is going to listen to it, and they're going to get some good content out of it. There are certain episodes that we did specifically that would be great for somebody that's brand new to listen to you say, like, how to join a mixed martial arts academy, what to expect when you walk through the door. And that would be the first episode that we send. And then as they become enculturated to our group, they start listening more and more. And they start to get, you know, an idea of what's going on and what the martial arts is about. Dave, what questions do you have around? How can Marco help you understand local podcasting better? Well, I think for me, I think it's going to kind of depend on the subject of the podcast. Like in Marco's case, he's doing mixed martial arts. So that doesn't really tie into like local dining in the area. But if I was a real estate person, maybe, and I'm trying to be known as the real estate person, maybe I am also trying to build my network. So I'm going out and I'm interviewing local businesses. I'm doing the community calendar, things like that to really mic it hyper local. So I think it kind of depends on, you know, what your, you know, if you need is networking, like if Marco gets really, I mean, let's say he makes friends with a local pizza guy. That's awesome. You know, maybe if they went to tournament, everybody goes and gets pizza. I don't know if that's really going to work though. That's not going to help the body fat percentage. I mean, you almost sound like you're talking about advertising too. But I mean, one of the things that Marco, you said, which I'm interested in, by the way, so we'll tackle some of that. But you said you wanted to part of the reason was you wanted to be like a known voice in the space, right? So, so I think that, you know, in that case, maybe the value is that, like you want to do that. So you want to be known outside of even your local community. You want to be known in the community of the Mixed Martial Arts or Jiu-Jitsu, you know, whatever it is. And so also, but that also could let the more that you get known, the more, the more, the more, the more public you are, the more visible you are, you can bring that back to your local business as sort of like as seen on this or as I went and spoke, I was a keynote at this major conference, Jiu-Jitsu conference or something, you know what I mean? So, I don't know, maybe that has something to do with it. But even just telling someone and they go and listen, you know, and we're trying to put a, you know, like we do it in a studio where, you know, we have a sound engineer, like it's, it's a, it's a pretty, it's pretty polished in the sense of how it sounds. But, you know, people are, they don't realize how easy it is to start a podcast and we could start it with, you know, the mics that we have in front of us right now. But it's, it adds a level of professionalism. And to me, to the people that listen to me, I'm just as famous as any other podcaster, right? And he has a podcast that gets a lot of listens, right? And I don't get a ton, but enough where people are talking about it in my school and then they tell their friends. So from that standpoint, yeah, you know, like I want to be the guy either here in California, in Texas, you know, I want to be the guy that people listen to when it comes to martial arts. And when you are learning a very niche thing, you, you're looking for the experts. So if you're local to me, right? And you see, okay, he's got a podcast. He knows all this stuff. Why wouldn't I want to learn from him as a student? Sheldon, are you, does this hit anything for you? I see you taking little notes. So I was taking a little video, taking notes, which is just like, he's doing better than even day over there. It's just staring, but I had to grab my notepad because I was like, this is pretty cool. First of all, and I guess at the end of the day, it kind of depends on what your ultimate goal is. So I've kind of heard a little bit of advertising could be a potential thing or a little bit of being a known voice within the space. I think both of them can, like, there's benefits with all of that. I think at the end of the day, what is your return of investment, right? So most of us, I would assume everybody does a podcast, is putting some money towards each episode, whatever that looks like, editing and engineering and hosting and all those types of things. So if you're saying, look, if I can get at least one customer to come in and I have them to start training with me because they listen to my show to me, to me, it's a no brainer. It makes sense. So whether you're a mixed martial artists or you have some other brick and mortar business, to me, if you bring in at least one customer that covers your time for putting a podcast together. I mean, you have YouTube channel. I don't know how to fix a car half the time and I just type it in in YouTube and it comes up. So to me, I could do the same thing on Apple Podcast, type in a topic, how to fix a carburetor or something. Maybe I can listen to someone tell me how to do it. Now, and to piggyback off of what Sheldon's saying, the other thing is, yeah, it'd be great to get somebody. I think all the marketing comes together, the podcast, the website, our sales funnel, you know, like all those things. But even more importantly is it, it gets them, my current students deeper into our community, right? They get to know me even more than the hour or two hours that they get to spend with me during class. So there's the other thing is the, what I'm doing also is raising the barrier to exit. The barrier to exit and that's, I didn't heard that one. I like it. Well, yeah, cause you've, you've built that relationship. And now when they come in to say, yeah, I'm like, this is my last month or whatever. It's really hard to do that because you've got that relationship. So absolutely. And if they can say, hey, that thing that just went down, yeah, my, you know, my sensei was over there and he was the person leading it. It just gives your, you know, your students more things to talk about. And if I'm Googling local karate shop, Oh, please not. Don't say karate. Please. Okay. I'm sorry. Don't speak the language. No, I don't. But if you say that, and you know, two of them have, there's three websites and two don't have podcasts and one does, you know, you want somebody who's, who's, it shows that you're up on the latest techniques. Credibility. Yeah. I mean, it certainly helps, right? Like at least I can get more information about what the people in the place is like, hopefully, right? Right. And can we curse? Cause hopefully, can we, or do you bleep it out? I will bleep it out so you can curse if you want. All right. Cause, and then they get to see, is this guy an asshole or not? Right. Like even before they come in, you know, so. Yeah. No, that's part of it, right? I mean, it's twofold, you know, it could be, I mean, maybe it just, it's a good filter too, right? Like it's like, I don't, and it, not even about just being a jerk, it's just like, I just don't feel like I vibe with that person, which is probably pretty important when it comes to an instructor for really anything, right? So. Right. I want them to vibe with me and I want to vibe with them. Like I don't, I don't want it to be a one-way street. Yeah. So, I mean, related to that. And so, well, actually Dave, you brought up, I mean, it kind of sounded like you're hitting on ideas of, of, of advertising. Is there any, do you do any of that, Marco? Is there any opportunities for local advertising? Like I said, again, we're speaking to a, a global audience. So I don't know that a pizza shop in Philly needs. Like you'd have to reach a lot of people specifically in Philly for that to work for the guy. But do you have any of those opportunities? Nah, we, you know, like, and we're so having so much fun doing it. And it's really like, it's not that difficult for us that, and it's, it hasn't really been that expensive that we don't, we're not looking for any of that. And we just want to put the content out that we want to put out and, and make our money other, other, other ways. Yeah, that's good too. Because I mean, real part of it is that your business is, is, is the sponsor essentially, right? It could be the sponsor. But on top of that, you know, yeah, I mean, it's not, sometimes not worth it. I mean, I think it's important for people to realize like, sometimes it's not worth it to manage another relationship. It could be more difficult to try to manage a sponsorship relationship than to just do the thing that you want to do. So. Well, yeah, I wasn't really looking for advertising. I was just trying to think like, how do I really make this hyper local? Like I live in Akron, Ohio. We are the, we're an hour from Cleveland and there's, we don't get any coverage. Like, ah, that's just a little Akron. Forget about them. So if I started covering the news that was local, then those people would go, I love this show because not only do I get great mixed martial arts stuff, but he lets me know what's going on in town and things like that. And that's where I said it kind of depends on like that kind of content may mix better with depending on what you're trying to promote. And you know, back to the original fake question of the plumber having a podcast, you know, is there, is there value in someone like that who really is, it's marketing, right? You're just trying to get someone through the door locally. And like I'm saying, how many people in your town are actually going to listen to your podcast? How many people are going to find it, right? So what do you, it's ironic that you have this online medium and that you're probably going around town tacking up your podcast on the telephone pole, right? Like, so I think it comes back down to what Mark keeps saying is that they're having fun, right? You have to just want to do it. You have to want to make the content and help be a resource, right? The plumber, honestly, in the plumber situation, a YouTube channel will be fantastic. And he'll probably get a lot of views. It won't translate into customers, but maybe even there's another business line for you there, right? Like you could have some form of digital product at that point, right? You're branching out. Like I don't know if, if you just exist in your town, if you're Jim's Donuts and you only exist in Philly, if a podcast, you know, if you're just doing it for marketing, probably not, probably not, right? You got to be doing it for something else. But I think the places that kind of businesses that have communities, right? Like a plumber doesn't have a community, a coffee shop does, right? Where people become regulars, they want to know about the beans, where they're sourced from, how, how is, what is an espresso, you know, those kinds of things are, who are the local businesses that come and buy coffee there? And then you interview John from John's Pizza Shop that goes to Ray's Coffee Shop and maybe kind of do some collaborative work like that. That's where I would think maybe a local business, but not a, you know, but a plumber would be tough. I agree. I think if we limit it to just a brick-and-mortar idea, I think, like what was said earlier is like this is, anyone can listen to a podcast, right? So it's accessible everywhere. But if Marco said, you know what, maybe we should start recording some of these training sessions and maybe develop an online course, or we can develop an online community that's paid subscription, those kind of things. I think we're allowing us to have more opportunities outside of just the brick-and-mortar piece when we have a podcast. I think starting off small and starting off with the local mindset and then kind of thinking, okay, how can I expand with COVID and everything that's happened. I think a lot of our brick-and-mortar institutions in general had to think about that. It's like, oh, okay, my gym has to shut down for a few months. What are some alternatives? I think if you're thinking long term, maybe that could be something to where you can have more of a presence online as well. Yeah. I mean, that's what a lot of the gyms did, right? They all went to online training. I know Elsie Escobar from she podcast. She always talks about how she used to teach yoga. She would record her yoga classes. They're still online and they're still getting downloads and she's like, they have horrible audio. It's this weird clip on Mike from 2006 and she's like, they still get downloaded though because it's evergreen. I could see that. What Sheldon said was right because I didn't even think, I forgot about when we were closed during COVID. There was another way for me to stay connected to my students, so that they know, hey, these are the updates. This is what's going on. This is when we plan on reopening, how we plan on reopening those kinds of things. Yeah. Very cool. Awesome. Well, Dave, should your plumber have a podcast? No, I don't. I use YouTube channel. YouTube channel. Yeah, I'm with you. Again, I think it depends on the content, but I'm with you plumber. I'm going YouTube channel. It is hard. I mean, you know, Sheldon's going to learn how to fix a carburetor via audio, so why not unclog your drain? I'm open to trying it. Now, if I destroy my car that, yeah, I'm taking it in, I'm going to be upset, but I might not try it. If someone can give me some detailed instructions via audio, I'm down to try. Something like that, you might be the only person in the catalog. I mean, there might be someone searching. Maybe, you know, the thing is that you don't know how people want to receive their content. So if you have content to make, I think it's really the bottom line here is like, don't do it because someone said, or that you're getting the impression that everyone has a podcast or you should have a podcast, you have to have something that you want to make. I mean, in my case, when I started in podcasting, I wanted to make podcasts because it was like, what are these things? This is amazing. How do you do it? I didn't have a topic, so I just turned that into the topic, right? But, you know, so if you're thinking, you have to be motivated by making the thing, right? I think first. And then really, I feel like, look, if your content's that good, you'll find a way to make it beneficial for your business, even if that business is only in your time, right? Yeah. And like you said, if you're not having fun, forget it because that's going to come across. It'll definitely come across. Yeah. If you're there for the marketing, people aren't going to follow you. Well, let's try to go to a story. Dave, you had... I have questions about this one, this Kickstarter. People are making money. I had somebody... This isn't really a story as I just... It's one of those things where on occasion, I will be... I remember once when I went to PodCon in Seattle and I walked in and some dude had elf ears on and nobody told me. I was like... All of a sudden, I was like, what did I just walk into? I kind of felt like the Wizard of Oz where it went from black and white to color. I was like, I have walked into a new world because I had cosplay. I'd never heard of cosplay in my life. And I was like, oh, well, now that I get that, I get it. So, somebody contacted me this morning. They said, hey, I see where people are using Kickstarter to launch a podcast. What are your thoughts on that? My original thought was buy a Samsung Q2U. They're 70 bucks. Like why are people raising $70 on Kickstarter? But I went over and it's nuts. There are people there that are making hundreds of thousands of dollars and some of them I looked at. This is one of those where in true podcast, a lot of it depends. So, some of these I looked at were doing kind of NPR style journalistic deep dives. But the one I'm looking at was called PADLC and I guess it's downloadable content. And what I really liked about this, they had $230,000 from 5,000 backers. And what I loved about this is they have a video there and it shows this video. This is apparently something they did and it's also, I think, maybe available. I'm not sure exactly how many different formats, but they quit doing the podcast and people lost their minds. They're like, when are you bringing the podcast back? And people were finding the old episodes. They're like, this is really cool. Ah, they don't do it anymore. And so, every time these guys went, there's video of them at conference after conference and people are going, hey, you should listen to the podcast. Any chance it's ever coming back? So, they said, hey, if you guys want it back, here's where you can make it come back. And I'm not sure what they were looking for, what their original goal was, but I'll take $230,000 to make a podcast. And I went over and there were some people that were kind of like, hey, I need $800 to start a podcast. I was like, okay, I see that. But there were some, one lady, $23,000 to create a mommy podcast and things like that. And so, part of me was confused because I'm like, you don't need that much money to start a podcast. But I did like the idea of using this as a litmus test, because if you can't convince people that what you're going to deliver is valuable, that they're not going to part with their value as in money for that, well, then maybe we just stop the world from having yet another boring podcast. So, that's the part I was like, that's interesting. If you're like, this is step one, raise money and you can't raise money. I don't know. It's just one of the things I haven't even really fully developed how I feel about the whole thing. I just didn't know this was going on. You have an agreement in the chat that not everyone should have a podcast. There were too many bad podcasts in 2013. Now there's 10 times as many bad podcasts. Your idea about a filter. I was reading that through that too. And all I thought at first was, because it says during PACS, which is an annual conference, people always ask them, where's the podcast? So, you have people demanding. They had a podcast stopped and now people are like, why'd you take that away? And now they are doing a Kickstarter to bring it back so they can, well, they had all these rewards and stretch goals and they didn't know what they were going to get. Essentially, they have to meet all their stretch goals. So, they made a lot of work for themselves, but they also made a good amount of money going in finding out. But they found out that through that is that the demand really was there. It wasn't like two squeaky wheels on Twitter, right? And a lot of these are hyper local. There was one called Memphis Weirdos, where they raised $2,300. There was another one about Kentucky Sports, where they raised $3,000. So, a lot of it is hyper local stuff. And I go back to with the media, A, just being the media and sucking in general, if you're in a small town, the small newspaper went out of business years ago. So, this is a way to kind of serve that local community that isn't aware of what's going on. I did see one, they were trying to raise $75,000. It was called Reveal. And that was the one I was like, $75,000. And I went and watched and it was very much kind of just super like NPR, 18 people on the team kind of thing. It takes a lot of money. Yeah. And they didn't raise it. They got $31,000 and it, you know, sorry, times out, you're done. So. But when I was looking through it, what made me think of as, and I don't know if it's Sheldon or Marco talked about building community, right? Or having a community, right? Or Marco, you're saying if the coffee shop is about the community that's in the coffee shop, this is something that requires you kind of coming to it with an audience, right? Like, so people are going to see this thing and be like, oh my gosh, I'll put my podcast idea on Kickstarter and I'll probably get $2,000, $3,000. You'll get two bucks that your uncle chips in, right? So like, you have to have the demand needs to kind of be there. Either you did proof of concept before, like if we went away for a year, let's do this, Dave. And then we're like, hey Kickstarter to bring us back, which was just employed. It's like some type of scheme to just get money. But it feels like you could be successful for someone who already has a community and is thinking, would you guys like a podcast? I would like to hire an editor, gonna need a little money. That would be great. And then just gauge interest, right? So I think that if you're getting the idea that Kickstarter is just a magic place to get money for your podcast, I think you need to bring something to it. Yeah, that would be a no. But what I don't understand about the podcast is if it was that popular before, right, and it can generate $230,000, what was the disconnect? Why did they stop it if they were that they would know how many downloads or how many people listen or what their community is like? Like why my question is why did it go away in the first place? Yeah, and I don't know the answer. Maybe they didn't know. Maybe they weren't on a good host. Maybe they hosted themselves. There could be a lot of reasons they weren't getting stats or didn't know how to read stats or it was the silent majority. Maybe it wasn't a ton of people, but it was enough people to pitch in 10, 20, $50 and adds up quick, even if you're just getting a few hundred to a thousand downloads, which you at the time think that's not enough to keep going. But even that, I mean, it looks like and this is sort of my idea of they really had something before they had a podcast. This is a cartoon. It's an animation of some type. It almost seemed like a very established brand of some other type of content that they couldn't sacrifice. Like that was the primary and it's like the podcast probably took just enough time that they couldn't create the contest. Oh, that reminds me of something else that happened in that and the one that you sent Dave that I was reading the downloadable content one, the PAX one cartoon one one is that you can't just be a podcast. They had something very unique. So they had, they did another podcast where they just, they just talk. They think about the industry or something. It's in there. We'll link to the article in the show notes and it's in the chat, but they had no idea that what people were loving so much was this other thing they're doing where they kind of just did a microphone in the room while they made the comic. So they had this process of making the comic where they just sat down and read stuff together. And when it was funny, that became the comic. That was the magic fairy dust of the podcast. That's what everyone wanted. They wanted to be in the room when the thing was created. So they also had something very special that you can't, you know, hey, we're four guys, we're going to talk about plumbing. It's going to be magic. No one wants to pay for that. But you really want to throw money at guys that don't realize they're holding gold until it goes away. I mean, if I like what they're doing, yeah, there's a podcast right. There is a podcast that doesn't exist unless this one TV show is in production. And I, if they would just get on the mic every week and do the thing and just talk about their theories of the show, I would pay good money because it's like, it was always the best part of my week. So hands down. Yeah. And they probably have no idea. Huge podcast, huge listenership. They could probably rake in lots of coin by doing the podcast, even in the off season. And they probably have no idea. Yeah, they just, they may not have known, they might have seen their numbers. Now 5,000 backers. So that's a fair amount of people. But I think if you watch the video, I don't think they realized like when you see things in person, like I like to take an interview that I've done and I'll write the question and I'll summarize the answer to kind of review my past episodes. And when you see it on paper, you go, that wasn't as cool as I thought it was. You know what I mean? I could have cut this answer out or something like that. And I think when they were face to face with their listeners and like every, according to, now the video's edited, obvious, but there were a lot of people like, hey, the podcast, what do we got to do to bring it back? I think that's really kind of what hit them because you'll see in the video, the guys like, all right, we'll talk to Brian, we'll see what we can do. We're not promising anything, but you can tell they're just like, wow, okay, well, we'll see what we can do. So it's, I'm with you on one hand, if I got 5,000 people, it's hard to walk away from 5,000 people, but it's, it's interesting. I just, I just stumbled across and was like, wait, people are doing this? So, and I'm with Ray, I want to point out that if you don't have, you know, if you get a hundred percent of nobody in your community, you still have nothing. So it does, this is one where you got to take a community or have a really good marketing arm. I mean, I find out about Kickstarter is half the time it's somebody's hospital bill. And it's, you know, my friend, Bill's cousins, Uncle Joe, you know, has lung cancer and you're like, ah, here's 10 for Uncle Joe. You know, so it's going to take some marketing to, to get it out there too. Yeah. And again, if you have a community and you're thinking, do I want to add this other, you know, because you get the impression from them that they really want to do the podcast, right? And that they want to pay an editor and that it's, there was a lot of work or could be a lot of work, which they're right. They may not have known their leadership, but they're right about it being a lot of work. So if you're considering adding this piece of content to an already existing brand and you're kind of like, I don't know, um, could be a good way to, you know, Dave, like you said, that litmus test is worth it, right? So I guess my question would be, do I have to be an established organization or group or have a community already before jumping into a heads, uh, Kickstarter? Or should I are that, because that was my thought, because you got $5,000, you made $230,000, like you had a following. So is that the way to go when it comes to kick starters? And like, I need to already have an audience. Is this for Joe Smo, who's just kind of getting started and they want to do their thing? Or like, I'm assuming you have to have some sort of social proof before you even start something like this. Not, I mean, you don't have to, it's like a podcast. You can just do it, right? That's kind of the beauty, right? It might fail. But I think you either have an audience and a community that you're in touch with, or you have an incredible idea that would resonate with that community and you just got to get in front of that community, right? So like, if you're going to create, you know, leadership 101 for plumbers, you know, whatever it is, and then you're just, you're, you get into the plumber Facebook group and it just, people are like, I really want that. They're going to support your Kickstarter, right? So you don't have to have the community if you know how to get into the community and your idea is kill, is awesome, right? Yeah, because I usually tell people to find some people that you feel are your target audience and say, Hey, I created this like episode. This is my first one. And I know I'm going to tweak this, but I want to get some people who I feel would benefit from this and you're it. So if you don't mind, could you listen to this podcast and talk about it like I'm not in the room? And then you got to ask those hard questions like, did you listen to the whole thing? If not, when did you tune out and why? What's the most memorable thing of it? And it's, those are questions that at times, if somebody answers honestly, and they go, yeah, I lasted about seven minutes and you're like, Oh, okay. Cause it was 45. You're like, why did you tune out? And they're like, well, your audio sounds like you're underwater, you know, calling from a wind tunnel, you know, whatever it is. Or, you know, you spent seven minutes talking about French toast recipes and it's supposed to be about this. So, you know, that's a way to kind of figure out, is this going to work or not? And that might be then once you get that, then you say, okay, hey, I've talked to all these people, you know, I've got this idea. This is what this podcast is going to be about. If you want to see it happen, I need a microphone. So, here it's a, I'm going to go Joe Rogan. I need 500 bucks for a microphone and I will give you a shout out or whatever. And in a way, if you think about it, Patreon is kind of, you know, that was the whole point of Patreon is it's crowdfunding, but it's ongoing crowdfunding. And I saw where one of the people I were looking at over have a Patreon. So, I don't know, maybe it's, you know, X amount of money from a Kickstarter to get you up and going and then a Patreon to keep it ongoing. I just was surprised that people were getting thousands of dollars. I was like, geez, Louise, holy cow. So we have like, mild debate in the chat, which, ah, well, that's good. Yeah, that's what we want. Podcasts live forever unless the creator actively takes it down. It clutters the space, whereas bad books go out of print. Bad singers usually lose their record deal. Essentially, you know, we've talked about this where makeup, you know, there's just the podcast directories are littered with one episode, test one, two, is this on? How are we doing? It's just, and it just sort of sits there. Right. And then, um, see Dan was saying that, uh, respectfully disagree. There's no way to know if you, uh, if you will love what you're doing until you try it. Singers won't know they can sing unless they go for it. So kind of two issues there where, yes, I think you do have to try a thing. Like I think we're, because I think that's based off of what we were saying that, um, you know, you have to, you have to know that you love doing a thing. So a podcast, you have, and that's part of like adding a podcast because you want to, right? You may think you want a podcast and you don't know and you can try and there's two separate issues about trying something. It didn't work. And then it sort of litters the space. One's more of a technical problem that I think we have in the hard part, right? So I don't know. And I think even, even Apple recently probably had to do something about, they used to have like this auto approval thing from anchor, which I don't think is happening anymore. So it caused a lot of problems. So you have two different issues there. Personal motivation and, uh, and knowing what you want to do versus a technical limitation of the platform to get rid of clutter. And I think if you have to pay me to make my podcast, I'm not sure how that works. I know, uh, my first podcast for musicians, I had done for about a decade and I was kind of running out of steam and I had new music added and, and new branding. And I was like, Oh, this is going to, and it just didn't do it. And I think if somebody came in and said, Hey, we'll give you a hundred bucks an episode to do this, I still, I, I had said everything there was to say at that point. So, uh, it'd be interesting to see, especially for the shows where they're bringing them back and how many reboots have actually worked. You know, anything about that? Will and Grace lasted one season. I'm trying to think of what else has been rebooted. I think in this case, it works because the audience just wants more of what they were getting. Right. And, and, and like you're saying, like the, sometimes a show just runs its course, but in this case, again, it's that unique feature that they have of watching the, uh, the sausage get made, right? Which is what they, which is what they had and was the thing that didn't even realize what people wanted. Right. And that's that whole thing of like trying segments on your podcast. So when emails you and says, or a lot of people email you and say, you know, we don't really like your book review section. Can you just go more into the, uh, the, the movies, the movie section or something, right? And you're, and you learn, you learn over time what, what people actually want. And hopefully, hopefully you learn, hopefully get that feedback. It can be hard to get. And then you make adjustments. You know, I don't always say like, do things because people tell you, because you'll get those squeaky wheels. You know, it should be this blend between what you want to do versus and what the audience wants. So, right. Yeah. Jonathan Oaks is a great example of that of trivia warfare. And he has this trivia show and he and his, you know, co-hosts are playing and somebody said, like, how do I, I want to play trivia against you. And he went, hmm, I have something that the audience wants. And so hence, Jonathan has a very successful Patreon account because he had something that his audience won. And it wasn't like, Hey, give me 20 bucks a month and I'll go buy a new microphone. You know, I mean, yes, that somewhat benefits the audience. If your audio is horrible, but in most cases, that's really more of a benefit for you. What Marco, you have a couple of stories here. So this more than 1000 shows are using Apple podcast paid subscription. What's that about? Yeah, it just seems like the paywall is getting higher and bigger and, you know, people's, it seems like people's content that is, or they're figuring out that if you pay for it or you get people to pay for it, that's how you're going to keep going. So I don't know how the small independent podcast is what, how they get involved in something like that. You know, like, how does a ninja rob or, you know, what Sheldon does, you know, are, are we good candidates for that? Or does it have to be hyper specialized? Or do we need to be, you know, because I looked at the list and 300, I'd never heard of 99% of the podcasts and the other ones I heard of were big media companies. So it was just very interesting, but also somewhat confusing. Well, there's, there's different tools for their supercast. There's glow.fm which is owned by Libsyn. There is memberful I keep hearing about. So if you want to do a premium podcast, there are tools to do that. And the beautiful thing is a they will give you your customers information. So if you join up at supercast and later want to move to glow, you can do that because you have your customers information and they're not going to take 30%. So that's the beautiful thing where with Apple, you don't, you have no idea who your customers is because they're not your customers. They're Apple's customers to which I say, no, and you don't get any of their information. So now I have yet to subscribe to a premium podcast on Apple. It better be drop dead, simple, stupid, easy for me to give them 30%. So I think that's the key, right? Is removing all of the business back in, you know, that's why you may opt into something like that, not to mention that you're in a major, you know, like you're in Apple, right? Well, and, and I've been playing with the value for value thing with Adam Curry's working on, I got to meet Dave Jones at podcast movement. And I said pulling up my zap account. I have $54.09 in Satoshi's online from my school of podcasting apps. So that's, you said a lot of words. I don't know what it even means. Yeah. But basically, when you listen to my podcast on, there's an app that just came out in the iOS store called Fountain that makes it super easy that as you listen to the episode, you are giving me like one, one millionth of a Bitcoin Bitcoin. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So why, how does this, how does this, I don't care about the app, but how do they make, how are they not going to die in two months by giving people money? Well, I'm assuming somewhere in there, the app is, Oh, the app has a feature that you can make clips, which is kind of cool. But to do that, you need to give them, they have a subscription model. If anything, it's like $2 a month. So at least they have a way of getting money. Yeah. That's, yeah. The whole, you know, free is not a good business model. That is still the case the last time I checked. Right. Sheldon, are you doing anything, any monetization with your podcast at all? Like any, anything? So I mean, my podcast is how I, how I run my business. Okay. So I just, I consult based off of the podcast. There you go. So I'm the sponsor. So the podcast is called leading equity and I run the leading equity center. So I mean, I'm mentioning that on every episode. I've been approached, you know, have this random detergent popping in the middle of your show. And I just, I just don't want to interrupt someone's experience. They're listening experience with something, Colgate or another company that has nothing to do with what I do. I rather just advertise myself. So if I have a product or if I have an upcoming event, I'm mentioning it on the show. The trick is kind of like what was mentioned earlier is like, am I going to spend seven minutes of a listener's time sharing about my latest and greatest product that, you know, maybe they just came to, oh, I heard the title of your show. That's what I want to hear about. I don't, you know, I'm not going to purchase anything from you, but, you know, I got to get through the seven minutes or however many minutes of time it is to listen to the actual content that I came here for. And that's, that's the challenge that I usually have, but I don't have any monetization happening behind my podcast. Well, anytime you can, if you have a story, then you can tie that story into here's what I learned from that thing I just did. That's like gold. I was just listening to Danny Osman, another guy that I caught up with at podcast movement. He's an editor and he just hit episode 100. So he did an episode on what he did and he was talking about how he joined some mastermind that was, he had to give him like your first born and he was like, yeah, that didn't work. He goes, but I did get two really good clients out of it. So it kind of did. So it was all this stuff that's like, here's what I worked in insights and things like that. So anytime you can share a story on what's going on in your life and here's what you can learn from that. It lets people get to know you. And for me, anytime I hear that, I always see like this person is actively trying to stay up to date with what's going on in their industry, which I always appreciate. And I asked that Sheldon of you, which that's a great model, right? Like podcasts work fantastically for getting exposure to what else you have to offer, right? Like they're giant billboards and proof of concept. Like why would you, you know, why would you take lessons from me or why would you consult with me? Well, here's like a hundred hours of free reasons, right? Like prove it to me, right? Which is great. And you're helping at the same time. But I don't know, are you aware of the, because Apple podcast subscriptions are, they're fairly new. So you can put your, you can put content behind the paywall. People can just press the button in the podcast app or I don't actually know how it works. And that content is monetized for you. Have you considered anything like that? So I think I kind of, I'm kind of like what Dave, the 30% is getting me. So I, I use Kajabi. And so I literally have the magic word. I wasn't going to go to that story, but I did jump ahead. I did jump ahead because I thought that you had something, but I use Kajabi in order to run my show. And so, and the leading equity center. And so yeah, I can put all my episodes. I actually have them all available, categorized and everything up to the first 200 that are available. So that to me is, I, and that's if I, and that's actually, I have it out for free for now. But if I do decide that I want to monetize it, I, I get everything back as opposed to only getting the percentage. Yeah. So I mean, it brings up the elephant in the room, this Kajabi thing. I don't care about apps on this show. I don't care about stuff that's going to be dead in two months, especially when Dave says, be careful, but now I don't know. Sheldon's using it successfully and it's working for him. So actually Sheldon, why don't you tell us what Kajabi is? So people are like, oh, you don't know what that means. So I started off. So when I started podcasting, I started with WordPress, you know, I wanted a website to go along with the podcast show. I honestly didn't start the podcast as a business with having a business in mind. It was just kind of fell into my lap kind of situation. And so it was just because I wanted to learn more how I could be better as an educator. And so I ended up wanting an all in one type of approach. So Kajabi, it holds my website. It has all my online courses, all my online products. It also does all my email marketing. So it's all in one. And I like that model. It's a little pricey for me. But I'm at a place where it's okay with it. That's my only downside of is the cost. But other than that, I mean, again, having everything in one place, I can tag my, you know, I was, I start off with like MailChimp and I start off with like kind of putting things together WordPress MailChimp. And then I was like, well, why don't I teachable? I was like, why don't I just get something that that does literally everything that I needed to do in one place. And so that's why I went with Kajabi. And I have a love hate relationship sometimes. But I'm in their customer service. And anytime I need support is hands down the best support I've ever gotten. Well, Dave, there we go. Kajabi, a clueless company. I don't know if that's your statement or when it comes to podcasting. So, so may I play the jingle, Ray? I suppose yes. And again, nothing wrong jingle. So nothing against Kajabi, the marketing, everything that that you just said, the email, the blah, perfect. When somebody jumps into my space, the first thing I'm going to ask them is, hey, I see you're doing podcasting. That is so great. If I come on your platform and I decide, hey, why you're not AB certified, your stats are a little wonky. You know what? I love the all in one thing. I might come back to you in a year when you really kind of get up to speed. You're a little early out of the oven a little too soon. So I want to move over to Captivator, Blueberry, Lipsen or whoever. I want to move. And you know what they're going to say? Oh, just import. This is what they told me. Their tech support said, just import the stuff to your new feed and you're good to go. Then I went, no, you're not. You've got to do this thing called a 301 redirect. And in non-geeky terms, it's a change of address. So what happens is right now when I start Apple podcast, it goes to your good job. You feed perfect. Okay. Now I move. If I start Apple podcast, it hits the change of address that says, hey, they moved to Blueberry or Lipsen or whoever goes over there updates the app. So the next time I far up the app, it goes to the new host. And right now Kajabi is saying, what's a 301? And that makes me just like just makes me I'm like, why are you in podcasting? If you can't, if you don't understand, and their tech support is like, no, no, we understand how RSS feeds work. And I'm like, apparently not like, you know, that or you just don't, you know, and I understand that they may be more in the realm of exactly what you're talking about. I want to put my podcast behind a behind a paywall and keep all the money. Absolutely. But if you're going to be in podcasting, you should probably give your customers a way to leave in the event they want to. I wish, could you have a jingle that goes something like 2005 podcast and problems? Yes, exactly. It's so funny how we do now. This is the yeah, you're right. No, don't let me know. We'll never play that again. This is the thing that hangs up every podcast company quotes air big giant quotes on that. That comes in the space. It's always about can I get out without ruining my podcast. And it's a bit of a sore part for me because working at Libsyn, I have seen so many companies come in usually somewhere in the religious space. And I'm just pulling these names out of my butt. Something like Sermon Pot or I don't know, Jesus Cast or some sort of like, hey, look at us. We're getting into podcasting because it's hot. Look at us. And especially that audience is and I'm painting with a very, very wide brush. Sometimes the religious audience isn't the most technical people on the planet and they just think it's cool because you like Jesus too. And so they jump on board and then it's horrible. These people don't know what they're doing. And these people figured out and they're like, Hey, I want to move to Libsyn. And I go to their tech support and I'm like, Hey, the customer doesn't know how to do a 301 redirect. We need to have this redirected and their tech support goes like a what a 301 huh? And I'm just like, Oh my God, not again. So I see this on a fairly, it's like at least once a year, a couple times a year, depending on who, you know, the hotter podcast he gets, the more companies get involved. My favorite thing about a company, especially if it's a consultant is when you go to the about page and it doesn't say who you're working with. I'm like, but I'm like, I'm trying to build a relationship with you and it just keeps telling me how great the company is. I'm like, yeah, but who's the company? Where are you at? What's your experience? So all right, I'll take a deep breath. I'll drink some tea. We'll be okay. So is your main concern more on not having access to an RSS feed through Kajabi? No, the ability to redirect it. I'll put an example when I wrote my book. The ability to take your audience that you earned and take them with you. Yeah. So if you're like, look, even if Kajabi worked for you, fantastic. They say it's beautiful, but you're just going to somewhere else because I give an example. Squarespace has a podcast, you know, service along with their website. And when they first came out, I don't know if this is still the case, but when it first came out, their feeds were a little fragile. A lot of people, their feeds are breaking and they would say, hey, I want to move to Libsyn. And I think they did have a 301 redirect, but they keep their website on Squarespace. So if somebody says, man, I love all the email marketing and the course and I like, like, but I want to move my podcast over to another actual podcast host right now. Kajabi's like, man, and they have contacted me since that article came out and said, Hey, it's on the roadmap. And I'm like, good to hear. Wait, was this your article? Yeah, that's my article. Yeah. So it actually, you did actually call them Clueless. All right. I just keep on the record. Yeah. So, so yeah. And that's one of those where I probably should have sat on that a day, but like that came to me. I was emailing them in the morning and by four o'clock, that article was out. And I was like, I should probably sit on this one a bit because I was, you know, like I said, because they say like RSS isn't domain based. And I was like, that's kind of like saying swimming isn't water based. I was like, it's like it just was like, you know, you can, you can sing within your key and people will think you have a limitless range. But man, when you go outside of that range, everybody's like, and they went way outside of the range. I'm like, stick with the marketing email stuff, kids. Let me ask you though, Dave, do you think that they're going after, you know, the podcaster or are they marketing this to their already established customer base and then working out from there? I think it's a little bit of both. What they've done is you have that person that said, and everybody here talk about Kajabi is like, hmm, I'm thinking about Podia because Kajabi seems a little pricey. So now you find a way to say, hey, you know, how you're paying 20 bucks for Libsyn? Guess what? It's not anymore over here. Bring your podcast over here and save yourself 20 bucks a month. So I think they're, that's probably, it's another selling point. So, and then for those people that they have them, they're like, hey, you know, I, you know, like you, you have your stuff there and like, hey, bring your podcast over. And what did you talk about earlier? Barrier to exit. I don't want to leave Kajabi because I got my podcast on and they put up a pretty big barrier to leave because you can't take your audience. It's all a silo, right? Squarespace, SoundCloud, blog, talk, radio, talk shoe, talk shoe. These are, this is just the, like if you're going to offer podcasting services, you have to, this is like critical, right? It's critical because people are going to come and go and you don't want to lose the audience that you've, Kajabi's not going to come and go. Maybe the podcasting service would go. No, the people are going to come and go through your service. And so don't, you know, it's just a, if you're going to get into podcasting, you probably need to understand some very core fundamentals of, of a podcaster and I need to be able to move my audience when I leave. Dave, in your article, you quit, you go, uh, what is it? Master of, uh, jack of all trades, master of none. Yeah, but you know, the rest of the quote goes, but better than a master of one. Ah, there you go. So yeah. And, and for the record, I know a lot of people that are really happy with Kajabi and I'm not bashing the company. I'm, I'm upset that they came into podcasting without apparently completely understanding or putting out, you know, this, if they had said this is podcasting beta, I would have been like, oh, okay, it's not fully cooked yet. But they're like, here it is, enjoy podcasting. And I was like, and that's, I seriously, that was the first question I sent to them. And I was like, and to their credit, their support was like quick and to the point. So it's like, they have good support. Yeah. I was just like, they just missed one thing. And it's like, guys, you know, and I'm with you. I don't think they, I don't think they're out to put captivator, you know, Buzzsprout or anybody out of business. It's just a value added. Like, hey, we added the service. And I was like, you added about 90% of it, uh, to, uh, you know, you missed one little part and that little part is, you know, it's the oil in the car. It's a big part. So, uh, you know, and, and that's fine. It's, there, there will be those that, uh, that we've seen many a company come and go. And so, uh, How many of these services were locked, dead, wrapped up in a beautiful bow when they first rolled out blueberry? That's true. You know, so, yeah. Well, that's to me though, it's, I don't know, it's kind of like launching up for me again, because I see the pain it causes. It's like launching a bicycle with one wheel. That's called a unicycle, Dave. But if it's built as a bicycle, you're like, Hey, like, where's the other tire? And they go, Oh, yeah, we're working on that. Or if they go, What do you mean? What other tire? That's the part they got me when they're like, What do you mean? What other time? What do you mean? Don't make, I forget what the result was. That's the important part is that when you contact, it's that they didn't understand it even when it was brought to them. So like, you know, and this is just a public feature request. That's all. Yeah, that's all. Straighten it out. And it's already on the road map. So that's, you know, there you go. I was just surprised. Road map. Word is getting tossed around too much lately for people who don't have something I want. It's on a road map. Yeah. Feels better. Feels better. All right. We have any, we are, we're doing good. We have any other stories? What's, what's your call to action? I was actually interested in this, Marco, you put this, well, what's your call to action story here? Because it wasn't really, I don't know if it was a story so much as it was a, is that something you were thinking about? I may be wrong. So it was an article, but it's, you know, don't get me wrong. We have to market and we have, you know, products that we need to sell or memberships that we need to sell. But we don't always have to be marketing. We don't always have to be asking for the subscription or the review or the, or the like, you know, like when I'm doing, when we're doing our podcasts, it's like, it's about, you know, I teach guys how to fight, but, you know, when, when we're doing the podcast is about our art, right? It's about talking and the art of podcasting, and then everything else comes second. And I can't stand podcast when it's like 10 minutes on the front where I'm like, I just, like you were talking about earlier, I just want to get to what I want to listen to. I don't care. I'm not going to buy anything from any of your sponsors. But like with Ray's stuff, like his YouTube channel and, you know, his Amazon affiliate links, like, yeah, you know what, boom, it was, it was value. I clicked the link. I bought a task cam DR 40 and a DR 70, right? Based on that. So you built a community and then I feel tied in, but I'm not going to buy, you know, some mushroom tech because Joe Rogan's sponsored by that. So it's just, gets a little, gets a little annoying. And so this, this article is mostly about call to actions and just having them and maybe how many and, and this is something I've talked about before and something I think about all the time, like, and we've discussed it on this show. In fact, I think I might have done a whole round, sort of centered around the idea of like, I know I've asked a question because I'm always curious, like, where do you put your call to action? What is your call to action? Do you have like five things you, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, smash the like button. Hey, hey, if you want to go like how many, like I've tuned out after like the second time you said, bloobly bloop, tick, talk me this, like it's just, it's over, right? So call to action is, well, it can be whatever you want. So like, how, where do you put it? How many? I don't, Sheldon, let's just, let's just learn by example. Like Sheldon, what do you do? What is your call to action? You're talking about how your business is. You know, you probably, they probably want, you probably want people to reach out to you, to consult with you, right? Yeah, I have my standard outro, which has, you know, follow me on X, on such and such, on the website and that gets thrown out. But I try to keep my shows on the content unless I have a launch that's happening, or I have an event, something like that. I don't, I don't every episode mention, Oh, sign up or email me or here's my newsletter. I don't do that every episode, unless again, I have something coming up. Maybe I should do that more. And again, it was always this time, how, how much time do I spend? It's tough, right? Because I mean, here's the funny thing. We hear it every time, smash that like button, hit the subscribe, because if you don't ask, but it does work, it works. And like, when you resist it, and then you do it and you're like, damn it, it works so good. Like it's very hard. Like if you don't ask, you typically don't get, or you don't get as much. Dave, you know. The thing I hear, and I understand why, because the minute we start promoting ourselves, we feel like a used car salesman. No offense to used car salesmen, but it sounds like this. It's like, Hey, if you like the show, like you can like maybe, I don't know if you want to, you don't have to, but like, you know, if you could like, I don't know, tell a friend or something. And my favorite is, my website is www.brrr.com. And like if you have to, whatever. Okay. Thanks so much. Bye. Yeah. And the reason for that is they feel like they're selling. And everybody thinks of the used car salesman. Again, no offense to used car salesmen, but what's, what's this, that stereo, that, that typical default of the, of the bad sales person is selling you a bucket of bolts to which I go, is your podcast a bucket of bolts? And they go, no, I worked really hard on it. Well, then don't worry like, and the people I've talked to that get boatloads, number one, please quit saying, reviewing my show helps me get found. That has been proven over and over that that is not true. It's social proof, but it doesn't help in the algorithm. But if you slowly specifically say, Hey, I want to thank you so much for listening to the podcasters round table. You've made it to over an hour already. And if you know somebody that would have liked this round, could you do me a favor? If you're on your phone right now, if you just like swipe up right now, there's probably a share button there in the bottom of right hand corner. If you could share this with one person, man, it would make me and rank so happy. We just want to help as many podcasters as we can. I really do deeply appreciate that. Our website, by the way, podcastersroundtable.com. We'll see you next week with another round. Boom. Slowly, because people got, I wish I, I wish I could afford like a marketing team. You have one. They're free. It's called your audience. You have to, Ray said it, when you say subscribe to the bell and smash the whatever, you got to ask for it. And I understand why people don't. I really do, but you got it. And it's, it's about how you do it. I make mine super short and, you know, get to the point. Like I always want to, you know, I used to be, I used to work as a cashier in the supermarket and some people, some lines are really slow to get to. And people specifically would come through my line because they'd be like, you know, you just get me out of here. Like I just want to go home. Like we don't have all these like long conversations and you're nice. So be nice and get people out. Like try to do both things. But, you know, Sheldon says he's got it at the end. Dave, you're talking about the end. If you go look at your retention stats, as soon as you indicate, you're like, if I'm like, Hey, well, it's been an hour. People are just like, Oh, he's ending. I'm out. They're gone. They're not hearing that. So where to place that call to action. And I think that's important, right? Marco, like front loading is baloney because the people are going to take action on your, whatever you want them to do, subscribe or share with a friend or buy this bleach thing you shouldn't eat, but right, whatever, like whatever it is you want to do. That's a weird reference. They're not doing in the beginning. Those people are, you know, or they're just, you're never going to, you're never, you're not even giving them a chance to show them, to show them why they would do that. Right. So maybe even like in Sheldon's case, like you're not doing it every episode, you probably should. Maybe, and it probably should be earlier. Right. And Dave, you have the school of podcasting. So where do you, where do you, how do you blend? Cause you're fantastic at serving your audience and you're all about value. So how do you blend this? I want you to join the school of podcasting. I, I now do, I used to do it at the end. And again, the minute you say, Hey, thanks so much for tuning in. Don't forget. It's a long breath. And it's over. Like, yeah, he's ending. So when I promote the school of podcasting, I promote it in the middle. At the very beginning, I spit out a coupon realizing that I've not given you any value yet. But the reason for, it's at the very beginning of somebody goes, wait, what was that coupon? Oh, it's at the very beginning. So they can listen to like 12 seconds and get my coupon. So that's how I do it. I try to tie, I don't have like a prerecorded 30 second spot. I try to tie it into whatever the heck the current subject is. We were talking last week. Now, right now I have a sponsor. So I'm not promoting me. I'm promoting my sponsor. But we were talking about having all of your ads on one page on your website. And in this case, my sponsors pod page. And I'm like, Hey, you know, an easy way to do that pod page. So I try to make each ad relevant to what the heck we're talking about. So it's not like, Hey, we're talking chicken, chicken, chicken. And all of a sudden I'm like, Hey, guess what? Fish out of nowhere. And people are like, What? So I try to have it seamlessly blend into that. And Jordan Harbinger is really good at that. He's right now his wife's pregnant with her second kid. And he has some sort of magnesium pill or something like that. And he tied into the story about how his wife legs hurt. And she started taking magnesium and now they don't. And I was like, that was a brilliant way to just tell a story. I get to a little glimpse of what's going into the world of Jordan. And, you know, before you know it, the sponsorship was over, but I have an app I use overcast and it starts coding a Brian about seven minutes in and cuts him out about five minutes to the end, because at the end, he just does a recap of what I just heard. Well, I just heard it. I don't really need a recap. I was there too. And the first probably 10 minutes are nothing but commercials. So I don't hear the pre and post roles. So those are great. They're, you know, I know there are services out that will give you pre and post role. But if you do that really, really regular people can program their apps to skip them. That's why to me, the gold is the mid role. You have 30 seconds skip and people are going to use it. So if you don't find a way to make it compelling or valuable, I just hit the button three or four times, right? And so, you know, it's funny, too, is because there's plenty of podcasts where I it's, you know, the sponsorships coming. And I know it's going to be three minutes and I'm just, I'm like hitting that button, like just to get and just waiting for what you can tell is even when they do it well, you can tell what an ad voice is and what content voice is it, right? And so, but once in a while, they're so funny in their ads that I'll listen and well, those things are in my brain. Like, like, I'm like, you know what, maybe I do need a mattress. What was the tour you were on? Ray went on tour with somebody, he was the sound guy. And people are like shouting out like, you know how like you go to a Skinner concert and they're shouting out free bird and like, so tell the story. So yeah, I went on tour with Pod Save America and that whole crew and sell out Chicago theater, just crazy, right? So their fans are, you know, lots of fans could sell out a big theater and we do the show and what we would do, there would be a sponsor break and they would just say like, blue apron. But then the crowd would just get upset. They're like, do the ads, do the ads because they're just so funny, right? That these guys are like natural comedians and they'd riff and people love the ads. And so it's like, we don't do the ads in the live show. Like it's not a, it's inserted later. Like actually I would like gather the guys and like addressing room that was like four by four because the audio was, the acoustics was better in that room that I could find in this theater and we do the ads before the show because it was very timely. I mean, they were very much like tied into current events. So but the audience would get so upset. And I mean, that's something you have to create, right? Like that was demand. That was part of the comedy of the ads was part of the show for a lot of the people. And I don't even know that they realized how much until you showed up in front of an audience and that audience is saying, give us the thing. Me undies, come on. Me undies. Tell me about your underwear. Are they edible? By buying that. We don't have any call to actions and our ending is just abrupt. I point to my co-host and he says peace and the episode's over. So, but the only time that we, the only times that we've had call to action is when we were coordinating a trip to Brazil and we would point people to, to the website and say, Hey, if you want to come with us, if you want to come with the Ninja Rob podcast to Brazil to train Brazilian jiu-jitsu here, or do you want to come? We put on a free seminar where we both, both taught it was like 70 people showed up, which is, you know, it's a big, it's a big seminar for, you know, live in person learning martial arts. But other than that, we're just, we're just doing our thing with, you know, almost like we don't, we don't give a crap about the call to action. We just want to put the content out, which is also cool. But the thing is what you do give a crap about is that it reaches the people you want to reach. Like we don't put this stuff out because we, we don't care that people listen. Like we do want to reach the people we want to reach. So this, the truth of it is that if you asked to do a thing, the audience is going to do it more than they're going to do it when you don't ask, right? Even if that's just like, tell your other friends who do jiu-jitsu, we exist and they'll do it. And then you're reaching the community that you're building for like, so I think there probably is some value and at least doing something, right? Like I get it because I'm, I struggle with that. I'm like, I don't, I don't like standardized intros even though I do it here, like a little bit. Cut to the chase. Like I always want to cut to the chase. It goes back to that cashier thing or like you want to get out and go on there. And I sell memberships. Like I'm in front of somebody asking them for money. So I don't want to always be asking for something, right? This is the problem that Dave's talking about. Like even when they, even when you, you're like, I'll do it, but then you do it and you're like so not wanting to do it that you're just like, well, maybe please do it. Everything doesn't have to be a Leo Laporte four minute audible ad. You can just say, hey, if you like this book for free, go to blahblahblah.com slash free book and get it today. Leo goes on for hours sometimes. So it could be simply as, hey, if you want to get involved with jiu-jitsu, I won't say karate or kung fu. Come visit us at blahblahblah.com and you know, yeah, I think it's about making what is valuable to you, to you, the community is valuable to you, the growing the audience in the community and, and really reaching that's valuable. So if you, that's what you extract value from, like get more of it, like literally just, I think people don't realize you're like, oh yeah, you know what? I have a friend that either is thinking about it, getting involved, wants to do jiu-jitsu or loves it and doesn't listen, doesn't even know we exist. Maybe you don't talk about it. I mean a lot of the success of your show is going to be word of mouth. A lot of those people are going to share it with their friends, but sometimes you just need a reminder and that's what happens on YouTube is I'm sitting in front of YouTube and someone says hit subscribe and I'm like, oh yeah, oh yeah, hit the button. Like it's not like they didn't, they don't want to or they didn't think of it, but again, just what is valuable to you, the community is valuable. So how can you make that community bigger? How can you get more people the information that you're trying to share? I think is and you can also pull stories from your community. That, that creates the fear of missing out. So when you can say, one of my students came up to Bidi today and asked this question and I thought, you know, that'd be a good topic for a podcast right there. You, you've admitted I have, you know, it's like I had a friend of mine that said I'm not getting any speaking gigs from my podcast. I said, I've listened to every episode I've never heard you mentioned that you even do any speaking. And again, what did she say? I don't want to be all salesy. And I go, all you got to do is say, I was speaking at a bunch of, at a high school to a bunch of students about such and such. And the student came up to me and said, but, and I thought that'd be a good idea for a podcast. Boom. Your audience now knows that you talk to high school kids or, you know, whatever it is, it doesn't have to be this Sunday kind of stuff. You can just work that in there. And all of a sudden your audience goes, Oh, I didn't realize he had a membership site. Oh, I didn't realize, you know, but we don't. And I totally get it. Like I am the worst at this myself. I've had people that say, wait, you have a book and I go, yeah, you know, I don't want to. So I totally get that. And, you know, I'm talking about like, don't put it at the end, but maybe it is at the end. Like it's fine. Like your hardcore audience, they're, they're, they're at the end. Yeah. And they're the most likely people. Like if it is something that you're like, look, we want to grow this community. We want more people to be in the conversation about jujitsu, share, like go find someone, share it, put it on your Facebook feed, whatever. Like that can work at the end because that the person who is listening to the end is the type of person who's going to spread the word about something they love. They also want you to like still do it. Like, and for some people, um, I can't even tell you like several times I've thought about the round table not existing anymore just because it's like, man, we've talked a lot, a lot of things. It's hard to gather people every couple of weeks. And like, and then it always, always something happens here or email comes in and be like, dude, I've listened to the show forever. I'm like, why have you never reached out? I didn't even know that. And, or there's like that topic I learned so much. And it's like, nope, can't stop. Like that was the fuel. Just a little, little drip in the tank was enough to keep, to keep the show rolling. So No, you just had me, you know, you just gave me an idea where like we could promote a seminar, right? Or a group introductory lesson. Hey, bring your friend to the Ninja Robb seminar. If they've never done martial arts before, you know, like that, that kind of thing where then go to this website, enter your information, there's another way we could leverage what we're doing or make the call to action like something that's just way, like it's more like it's a call to action to like do something that has nothing to do with your show, right? Like, right? Go out and, you know, like clean up trash. I don't know what it is, like go help, go help someone who's homeless, like do something. Like there's a space and you're talking to an audience. Like maybe it has nothing to do with your show. But if you're helping someone else, you, that could really come back. The best one ever, Bob Barker, have your pet spit into your patch. Like, what was that about? Yeah, yeah. It's like, was he on the board or something? Why did that happen? Why? He was on the board. Yeah, price is right out of nowhere. But you never forget that is the thing. It's funny how you remember the climbing dude of the mountain who falls off and then right and then spade new to your bets. Oh my gosh, that's so funny. Because we all heard it 8,000 times. Yep. Yeah. So like use that, use that community and that space for good. Like, and I'm not saying you're not doing good in your podcast, but like you could do call to action that is nothing to do with your show, but that helps the community at large. So well, I think we got through all our topics and so we didn't. So like for anyone who's left over, if you're still listening, this is not a call to action. I actually want to know a little bit more. We've mentioned words like equality and jiu-jitsu like Sheldon, what is your podcast about? So my shell again is called leading equity. When you hear the word equity, sometimes you think about like housing and stuff like that mortgages minds a little different from an educational standpoint, you know, you do have equality. It's kind of like giving everybody the same thing. But equity, when especially when it comes to education is more of making sure that individual needs are being met. So what does this child need? What does this child need? It may not be the same thing that every other child was getting, but this student might need a little bit extra time. This other student might need just some support with their reading. And so I just provide a lot of tools and resources to help our educators out there to make sure that they're meeting the individual needs of students. All right, so your target items would be educators? Correct. Awesome. But do you get feedback from the audience? Do you find that like people who are not educators listen? You know, it's not really. I'm pretty niche. It's mainly educators. And that's, and it's K through higher education as well. It's not just like your K-12, but I have professors and, you know, I get a lot of research guests that come on and have published something. And then we kind of go over that article. But yeah, I'm pretty niche. I don't get a lot of people outside of the educational realm. Cool. So then helping this audience, what would you say is the best way that people find out about your show? I think if you are interested in learning more about diversity in general, this would be a good show for you to kind of learn a lot more about it. But you're going to definitely find my stuff at leadingacquitycenter.com. Do you come up for diversity? Like if I'm going to type that into iTunes or have a podcast? I don't search. I don't know. Maybe. What's the number one way you get the word out? Like, how do you market your podcast? Or do you not market it? It just does its own thing. I mean, I'm on Instagram at Sheldonacons. I also have a Twitter. But other than that, yeah, I had my email list, you know, again, Kajabi does all my stuff. So I just kind of keep, you know, spread the word that way. Nice. All right. I think there's a lot. I think there's some opportunity there. Get the word out. All right. Well, hopefully this helps. We get one new, look, one listener. That's one listener. One listener at a time. Marco, what is, you told us a little bit, but specifically, what do you guys cover on your show? Yeah. So the Ninja Rob podcast, it's sort of mainly, we talk about martial arts in the beginning and now we're 115 episodes in. So. So wait, ninja is okay, but karate is not okay? Well, because Ninja Rob is an actual person. So who's Ninja Rob? Ninja Rob is a unqualified martial arts instructor in a very bad neighborhood that one of the guys on the show learned from as a young man. And he relates this story and it's hilarious. That's funny. And we decide when we started the podcast, we go, this has to be the. All right. All right. So we're helping users now here. We're helping listeners at the round table because that's, people are not searching Ninja Rob. Correct. Like how are they finding, like that's hilarious, right? So the challenge for a show like that, it uses a name that is like, doesn't really tell you what the show is. Like the challenge is how do people find me. So what do you do with that? Right. So again, not to sound like, you know, like, we don't care, but we're like, this is what we wanted. And this is what we were going to, we were going to put out there and we marketed it to our students, right? To the people that we know. And then from there through our social media and the website and, you know, and that we're not putting like crazy effort into it from a, that standpoint, but you know, we're, we're still here or two years later. I put no effort into this show. All right. Let's, the truth is out. Okay. The round table could do a lot better. I don't do. So I asked these questions and I'm trying to help people who, who are, who think of these things and actually want to do better, but mostly I want to get tips from you guys. Like if you guys have done something that has been successful, like that's how this audience learns. I do nothing. So like, that's why I bring other people on and learn from them. But so I get the, I mean, look at this, this show gets, it doesn't have an intro. Dave brought in a stinger today. We're 158 episodes in that really hasn't happened before. Okay. I was shocked by that. There's no, there's no production value. It doesn't get edited outside of the thing that I make sure it's proper for a podcast delivery. And I throw a call to action at the end, which is not following any good advice, right? That don't even given here. So, so I totally, I totally get that, but I do think that, you know, because what's cool is that you do develop a community and you find people, oh my God, who listen, if you have people who listen every week, they're finding extremely valuable and you want to also reach the guy or the lady down the street who also wants that, but didn't know you existed, right? So sometimes it can be hard to market and even he's just like, look, I just want to do the thing. We're three guys and a woman talking about this thing and we just do it. That's cool. If it gets it out there and you're doing the thing, perfect. But hopefully we can help you like grow that thing and then more people can enjoy it. So, but wait, you, so what is the, so I derailed with the Ninja thing, which is great. I love that. What's, what's the show? So we, you know, the Ninja Rob podcast, we, so the beginning is we just talk, you know, we're, we haven't seen each other. We catch up, right? And we, you know, some jokes and have some fun, you know, like what's going on with life and my, the co-host, you know, we get into a lot of arguments when it comes to fights and techniques and, you know, those kinds of things. And our, our audience loves it. They're like, oh, we love it when you guys argue because it, you know, they, it's a, it's a real thing. And then we have some bits that we do like hate on sites of things that we see that it's like, if I see this, I instantly hate it or, you know, love on site, you know, that kind of thing. But so sandwiched between some of the bits is the martial arts, the, the lunch meat of martial arts, right? Fights that are coming up techniques. We also do, we take questions, right? Where our listeners will send in questions and they want us to answer it on air. And a couple of the other bits that we do is we answer questions that we weren't asked, right? So we'll go to Reddit or different forums and take a martial arts question and give our take on it as opposed to who they really asked it to their take. So. Do you get any feedback on what people like the most? You know, this is sort of, this part of this thing where like, oh, we, we dig the, we don't care for the bits, but we really love when you guys argue. You said people love the argue part, so you must get some feedback. Yeah. So we get that and they, you know, like we'll always, people, oh, this is where I hate on site or this is where I love on site, you know, like that kind of stuff, right? Which is important. I think everyone, you guys pay attention to what you're doing and what people are reacting to. Like if, if your goal is to, to give the audience more of what they want. So anyway, speaking of that, if you're listening, if you're watching the comments now, email, Ray podcastersroundtable.com. Do you like that we dig into the guest podcast later or earlier? Let us know. And yeah, then we'll head out of here. We did a solid hour 20. So we are, we're round 15 here. How many rounds in jujitsu? Depends. Oh, it's not defined like a box. No time limit. You could go. How do you win? You get a submission points, right? Make the guy quit is usually the best way. Oh, never give up. No, go forever. Awesome. All right. Well, let us know where we can find your podcast and we'll get out of here. Sheldon, thanks so much, man. First time round tableer. Really enjoyed it and I appreciate your time. What's the, what's the, where can we find your podcast? Ninja Rob.com. It's on our website. And if you just search Ninja Rob on Apple podcast or wherever you look for podcasts, we're the only Ninja Rob out there. There's the advantage to the non-generic name, right? Like there's the advantage. They own it on Google. Very cool. And Sheldon, where can we find your podcast? Leadingequitiescenter.com. Very cool. All right. Dave Jackson, co-host. Thanks, man. Thanks. This is fine, man. Dave Jackson School of Podcasting.com. All right. And if you're listening and you're not watching youtube.com slash podcasters round table, check us out. There was, you know, I feel really bad because I chatted earlier. Oh, who was in the chat? Someone was in the chat. They said they'd listened to a hundred episodes. I don't know if it's calling. I think it's calling. And he finally showed up live. And I even asked in the chat, like, what made you show up live? And I think he just, he had, he was listening to a podcast and then he opened youtube and we were just there. So sometimes you just catch fire and it happens. So thanks for joining us live. And yeah, check us out. Podcastsroundtable.com. See you next time. Wave goodbye. We're out of here.